This is the story of Peekay, a frail, young, English boy growing up poor in South Africa and of his refusal to be demoralized by the racial torment surrounding him. On the road to becoming a young man he cultivates some uniquely, diverse friends and discovers many truths, not the least of which, are that loyalty, strength, love and compassion, coupled with a insatiable, thirst for knowledge and armed with the focus and courage to stay true to one's own self, can all be fused together, thus harnessing a power so potent that any worthy goal can and will be achieved. For me the message that rings out loudest and clearest in this story is how ridiculous racial hatred truly is.

Uhh it was a school book so it wasn’t that good and I used spark notes for like half of it anyways

"Pride is holding your head up high when everyone around you has theirs bowed down. Courage is what makes you do it."

Enjoyed this book so much. Character development is outstanding.

It definitely deserves a 5 star rating! Absoloodle!!

PS: the audio book narrated by Humphrey Bower is JUST FANTASTIC.

Wow... incredible!!!
I fell in love with Peekay even 'before' he was five years old, starting in South Africa, when he shares of being nursed from his lovely black nanny before being sent to boarding school. ( although we follow him from age 5 to 20 - from the late 1930's to mid 40's).

Our oldest daughter attended a boarding High School in Michigan for a short time -an academic/arts school. The family separation was painful. I can't begin to imagine sending a 5 year old away to a boarding school even in the 'best' of conditions.
And the fact that this story is inspired by the authors real life....for me, this is one of the most wrenching parts of the entire book...."being sent away from his family at age 5 -- from 'love' he was receiving to 'hatred' he was walking into.

Peekay is bullied and abused almost immediately upon arrival as a 5 year old at his boarding school. He's the youngest child in the school.
Missing the comfort of his Black nanny ( Peekay is English and white), who would soothe his hurts...missing his mother who was sent away due to a nervous breakdown, Peekay was the first live example of the congenital hate they carried for his kind.
"The Boer War had created great malevolent feelings against the English, who were called the 'rooineks'. It was a hate that had entered the Afrikaner bloodstream and pocked the hearts and minds of the next generation".
Given that Peekay, spoke English, he pronounced sentences that killed their grandfathers and grandmothers to the world's first concentration camps. Little Peekay had no advance warning that he was wicked before coming to the school.

One of the other kids - called 'Judge' abused Peekey regularly. Peekay even made a deal with him to do the Judge's homework and make sure he didn't fail-- but he still continues to abuse him. - really 'tortured him.
We see how Peekay begins to survive- horrific conditions at such a young tender age: Peekay says:
"One thing got to them more than anything else. They could make me cry. Even the Judge, with all of the fear he could provoke, could not make me cry. I suspect they even began to admire me a bit. Many as them brothers my age at home, and they knew how easy it is for a five-year-old to cry. In fact, I had turned six but nobody had told me, so in my head, I was still five".
"Not being able to cry was the hardest part for me as well. Crying can't be a good camouflage. In truth, my willpower had very little to do with my resolve never to cry. I had learned a special trick and, in the process, had somehow lost the knack of turning on the tap".

Peekay is a diamond in the rough....an inspiring character. He's smart, open minded, and doesn't have an ounce of bitterness or hatred in him. He develops meaningful friendships with teachers and mentors who teach him to read. He meets a healer, and a boxer. We learn a tremendous amount about boxing. We also learn a lot about the history of South Africa through the eyes of a child.

The themes of discrimination were well defined by the author: the Boers vs. the English - South Africans vs. the Germans - the Jews vs. the Germans - white Africans vs. the Black Africans.
Violence is graphic - so be warned.

It's a cruel and beautiful world we live in!

The Power of One follows a young boy as he navigates his way through life in the divided and hostile lands of South Africa. It is the story of an English child who refuses to be demoralised by the discrimination that constantly surrounds him. It is the story of Peekay, the boy who brought hope to the hopeless and sight to the ignorant, the boy who fought against oppression.

On his journey to becoming a man, Peekay encounters a number of diverse friends, all offering a new lesson on how to get through life. These friends educate Peekay in compassion, love, loyalty and strength and provide him with courage to stay true to himself and an insatiable thirst for knowledge. This book deals with race, class, objectivism, faith vs. reason, obsession, religion and science. Simply remarkable and enlightening, this was an eye-opening read that I would recommend to all. This is a book everyone should read at some point in their lives.

I started reading this book because I am absolutely in love with the movie so I approached the novel with a number of expectations, which were unfortunately not met. I was a little disappointed to find that the book and the movie are vastly different. While, yes, the book is amazing, I couldn’t help but feel a little sad that some of my favourite parts from the movie were not in the book. I found I was waiting for a plot that I loved but never came.

I also found that I didn’t get much closure at the end. Unlike in the movie, I was left with a great number of questions and I felt that the ending left me a bit flat. Despite this, I struggled to put this book down and I can safely say that it should be on everyone’s must read list.

The Power of One is beautifully written and Courtenay exquisitely captures the essence of childhood in Peekay as he gazes wide-eyed at his confusing and confronting world, attempts to wrap his head around the politics of adulthood and endeavors to avoid getting caught up in the destruction of discrimination within society.

Check out my full review here

I've read this book three times and each time it's as good as the previous read, if not better. A semi-autobiographical novel, Bryce Courtenay's The Power of One is set in South Africa immediately before, during and after WWII. The novel's protagonist is Peekay - just Peekay - who is, in all respects, a remarkable young man. The story begins when Peekay is 5 years old and ends when he is 17, but the 12 years covered are formative; although we don't know what lies in store for Peekay by the end of the book, we know he will carry the experiences of his boyhood with him for the rest of his life.

Young Peekay is a white child of British heritage growing up in South Africa after the British absorbed the Boer republics into the British Empire in the early 1900s after winning the second Anglo-Boer War. The Boers, who speak Afrikaans, and the British, who speak English, spend a lot time looking down on each other, both both group look down on black South Africans, who speak many languages. Peekay learns to speak all the languages, which of course is symbolic of his uncommon ability to find a way to relate to and communicate effectively with so many other human beings throughout the book. He is treated horribly at times but somehow manages to meet some extraordinary people who help him in his endeavor to grow up. The rich character development is my favorite aspect of this novel.

This third time around I listened to the audiobook and it is a great listen. The narrator is excellent (even if his pace was a tad slow), and it was very helpful to hear all of the African and Boer names and vocabulary words pronounced properly. I recommend this book often, even to young adults since Peekay spends a good portion of the novel between the ages of 10 and 17, and even to men since there are very masculine themes, and it is universally admired. All my book clubs at the library just read it and loved it (despite being longer than a usual book club pick).

Shit.

Of all the books I read in 2009 one stands out in the horizon of my memory, a mass market paperback with 540 pages of microscopic print which I devoured in a day and a half.
The Power of one gave me the chance to meet a part of myself that I thought I had lost forever. It rekindled a long extinguished flame of hope, it awakened a lost feeling of wonder, it gave me proof that one can make a difference.

Set in South Africa in the 1930s and 40s , The Power of one is the compelling coming-of-age story of "Peekay", an innocent English boy who very early in his life realizes that there are greater things at stake than the hatred between the Dutch Afrikaners and the English. The Second World War in Europe, the growing racial tensions and the beginning of Apartheid will influence his world and challenge his spiritual strength.
Even though the odds are stacked against small Peekay from the start, he never loses faith in the goodness of people and following the advice of several improvised but memorable mentors who will change his life, he becomes an improbable icon in boxing which will make history.

Reading this book felt magical, the story was touching in so many different ways that sometimes I had to stop reading, overwhelmed by the details and the tenderness I felt for this pure little boy who made a turbulent and full of hatred world shine with his goodwill and with his mysticism.
Peekay is one of the most inspiring characters I have ever met. He has become a part of myself, he belongs to me and to all the readers who re-learnt to believe along with him.

One of my favorite books! This is a truly inspirational historical fiction about of boyhood in South Africa at the birth of apartheid. Follow the life of a British child who comes of age amidst resentful Boers who are recovering from their own persecution while simultaneously championing the causes of Hitler in Germany. This precocious boy struggles to understand the clash of races and racism while simultaneously overcoming boundaries through the medium of competitive boxing.

One perhaps could make the arguement that a tinge of racism lingers in the storyline itself due to the fact that the main character, a white boy, becomes the perceived savior and idol of the native African tribesmen (sort of like Ben Kingsley, a Brit, portraying Gandhi onscreen). However, it is still a wonderful book in which the reader becomes immersed in the story, place and time.

4.5 Stars

What’s not to love about a book about rising up and succeeding and becoming a symbol to all the people ( White, Black, Boers) of South Africa!
An uplifting book about a young boy who is tormented at school and whose dream is to become a welter- weight champion. Peekay, the boy, is wise beyond his years. He listens and learns and becomes an instrument of change.
A beautiful, heartfelt book that was occasionally bogged down by too much detail, but nonetheless succeeded in all the important ways- a great story that is inspirational and satisfying!
Highly recommended!

What a disappointment. Hailed as a story of triumph over prejudice, I extrapolated some very different themes about vengeance and the superiority of physical violence.

I loved the storytelling and the portrait of World War II South Africa. Having turned to the book after memories of seeing the movie in the late 1990s as part of a unit about apartheid in middle school, I was expecting the uplifting tale that I remembered.

But as an adult, I found at its roots a story of a young boy whose entire life is dictated by the ghosts of childhood trauma. Peekay spends his life trying to be all things to all people because in his words survival is about "camouflage." His glorious moment of self-definition and closure comes from beating an old adversary to a bloody pulp. And in case that isn't enough, he mutilates the man and rubs vomit into the wound to ensure permanent scarring.

This is our protagonist in his moment of triumph over the ghosts of his past. Despite the emphasis on his intellectual training, his boxing career is what matters most to him. His goal of being welterweight champion of the world is the only goal that is his and his alone. And his moment of triumph comes from physically dominating and humiliating someone else. Not from finding some inner peace or forgiveness inside himself, but by exacting vengeance, by proving he is the more powerful guy physically.

When I realized this, it disturbed me, particularly because the book is held up as such a paragon of anti-racism. In fact, it is BECAUSE South Africa was obsessed with exacting vengeance and proving who was the most physically powerful guy that cycles of violence and oppression continue. Indeed, it is the reason for wars and all kinds of violence everywhere.

Another villain in the book sucumbs to a humiliating and painful death from anal cancer. The author seems obsessed with dealing out grisly "justice" to the "bad guys via these crazy coincidences.

To me, a truly powerful book would have been one about the power of forgiveness, letting go, and coming to inner peace yourself. Instead, it is a story about a boy obsessed with growing up big and tough because he let other people define him. He even admits as much in Book 2.

There are some truisms about life in this novel, some quotable quotes, and as I started off saying, it is an entertaining story written by a good writer. But it is worth mentioning, too, that Geel Piet ("Yellow Pete," a reference to his "high yellow" skin color) is the closest the book comes to having a developed black character. And it doesn't come very close. He is described as a tricky, conniving survivalist, whose eventual powerlessness to control the system is demonstrated. There are nice black people, there's the benevolent mammy trope, the adoring, compliant house servants, the indebted and inferior-skilled sidekick. But there aren't well-developed, strong, interesting black characters.

How, then can this be a book about anti-racism? How is it a powerful or inspiring tale about overcoming an unjust system? It isn't. It just another coming-of-age story written by a white male with a white male protagonist.

Again, how disappointing.

Ultimate Underdog: The Triumph of the Human Spirit

What a wonderful education about South Africa, boxing, and the indomitable spirit of a young boy named Peekay. I will never forget this endearing character.

Peekay is an adorable five-year-old who's ripped from the warm bosom of his African nanny and sent to an awful boarding school where he is bullied and abused. This kid is a survivor. He channels his mistreatment into the dream of becoming the boxing welterweight of the world.

So many people and life events try to derail him, but the Peekay train chugs full speed ahead, bolstered by loving mentors from all walks of life. There's a fantastic cast of characters: 1) Hoppy, a train worker who sparks Peekay's dream via his David vs. Goliath boxing match, 2) Doc, a German music professor/scientist who teaches Peekay to question everything except for his own internal wisdom, 3) Geel Piet, a Black prisoner who teaches Peekay how to box and survive crushing odds, and 4) Morrie, a Jewish classmate who teaches Peekay friendship and money management. Now that I list Peekay's main mentors, I realize each is an oppressed underdog in his own way (Hoppy too small, Doc a German during WWII, Geel Black and imprisoned, and Morrie Jewish and smarter than many adults.)

Noticeably absent as a mentor is Peekay's mother. She has suffered mental illness and turned to fire-and-brimstone religion, telling her son he is doomed to hell unless he becomes born again. When Peekay asks Doc about his damned soul, Doc responds:

"Peekay, God is too busy making the sun come up and go down to be concerned with such rubbish. Only man wants always God should be there to condemn this one and save that one. Always it is man who wants to make heaven and hell. God is too busy training the bees to make honey and every morning opening all the new flowers for business."

Amen!

As a White English boy in a country on the cusp of Apartheid, Peekay is taught to view the African people with disdain. But he doesn't succumb to such racism, mostly because he finds more decency and goodness in Blacks than in many Whites. And the Africans come to revere him. The tribal concert at the prison is a magical moment of cultural enrichment, showing that character is much more essential than skin color in defining humans.

Over the course of this journey, I couldn't help but root for such a compelling underdog. With faith and perseverance, Peekay succeeds at whatever he puts his mind to. (I never quite understood why he calls himself Peekay. Did we ever learn his real name?)

4.5 stars. My only quibbles are the meandering length and the disappointing ending. Peekay mentions his dream to be the welterweight champion of the world approximately 834 times, then the book ends without any mention of him pursuing the dream? And what about the even more important aspiration to fight against Black oppression, perhaps to unite Whites and Blacks? If anyone could do it, Peekay could. I also find that ending on a note of revenge belittles the beautiful themes of the story. As a reader, I feel misled.